Nuffield Scholars win 2010 Food Northwest Award for Innovation
Cheshire goat farmers, Tim and Marnie Dobson, both Nuffield Scholars, have won the 2010 Food Northwest Award for Innovation.
Adopting a partnership approach with the local dairy industry has helped Tim and Marnie - who run Chestnut Meats based at Tarporley - to deliver their fresh goat meat across the country, while helping to reduce waste and cut costs.
Partnership approach
The two took a gamble when they decided to rear a herd of South African Boer goats, taking a traditional small tenant farm and moving into the added value sector. But the gamble has paid off and now, having introduced goat meat to the Northwest, they have grown a strong customer base and are excelling in an increasingly educated and demanding market place.
In 2009 they realised that some of their deliveries of goat meat were not arriving with their customers in the same standard of quality, as they were when they were dispatched. So, Tim, who used to run a dairy farm, approached local cheesemaker Joseph Heler, in Nantwich, which distributes its cheese nationally, to see if there was a solution.
The company now works in partnership with Joseph Heler, to collect the large polysterene boxes in which its cheese 'starters' and rennets are delivered to the factory. Whereas, they would previously have been discarded, Chestnut Meats now collects and uses the boxes to dispatch its fresh meat to its customers, keeping the meat completely fresh and stopping the boxes from going into landfill.
The company has also started to work with Becketts Farmhouse Cheese and First Milk, achieving cooperation right across the dairy chain.
Tim says: "We are absolutely delighted to win this award. Operating in a niche market means that we have to be innovative in everything we do and this is recognition of all of our efforts."
Ongoing innovation
Tim and Marnie's innovative approach has helped the business go from strength to strength, with customers spread across the UK. In the last 12 months the business has taken on an additional member of staff and has seen a 40 per cent increase in turnover. The pair continues to look at ways to expand the product range and use as much of the carcass as possible, with a new line in goat hides and skins now under development.
Tim is no stranger to innovation and in 2008, the farm was faced with a problem of how to ensure a sustainable supply of goat meat for its customers throughout the UK, for all 12 months of the year. Tim came up with the idea of working with the UK's goat milk producers to use the male (billy) dairy kids, which are usually killed at birth. Chestnut Meats now works with farmers in Somerset, Essex, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire by loaning them its meat goat sires, to breed with the female (nanny) dairy goats and in return, they get first refusal on the billy kids.
The idea to specialise in goat meat was taken from Canada where the industry is more developed, and Tim and Marnie are helping to make this healthy, versatile meat more mainstream. The meat is sometimes referred to as 'Cabrito' or 'Chevron', is low in cholesterol and saturated fat, and is high in taste.
Chestnut Meats
Chestnut Meats is a family business, with Tim, a fourth generation farmer caring for the animals, and Marnie, who previously worked in the hotel and restaurant trade, managing the sales and marketing. Radmore Green Farm is 110 acres, set in the heart of the Cheshire countryside, and is also home to rare breed Welsh pigs.
Tim was awarded a Nuffield Scholarship in 2002, with Marnie following in his footsteps with her own award in 2010 to look at developing a niche market. She has recently spent two weeks in Washington with other Scholars looking at global agriculture, and plans to visit businesses in northern Europe and Australasia over the next 12 months.
The company has also had huge success in recruiting a student on placement from Harper Adams University College in Shropshire. Sarah Holt, a farmer's daughter from Sandbach, who is studying for a Bsc in Agriculture and Animal Science, is completing her dissertation on the effect of diet on health and mineral levels in goats. Tim says her work has been invaluable and has helped to improve the goats' health through changes in their diets, a vaccination programme and a mineral supplement regime.
The company houses a butchery unit and cutting room at the farm to help process its goat meat, as well as its own pork. It processes its pork into added value products, giving it a wider product range, including bacon, sausages, salamis, air-dried hams, pancetta and chorizo.
Customers, including restaurants and butchers, are also encouraged to see the animals before they buy the meat, which is available either direct from the farm, at food fairs, farmers markets, or via its online farm shop, www.chestnutmeats.co.uk
The Food Northwest Award for Innovation was sponsored by ENWORKS.
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